Sync Stories: Provisioning a BitTorrent Sync Server

Sync Stories is a column dedicated to our users. Each week, we showcase a different use case for BitTorrent Sync and the personal stories behind it.

In this week’s edition: Software developer Andy Dixon shows how the combination of BitTorrent Sync and cloud hosting network Vultr can help you create an always-on, high capacity virtual storage system.

From Andy:

BitTorrent Sync is an amazing new system which enables computers to share files between each other for free without needing to pay for services like dropbox or spideroak. It works by sharing a secret between machines and when the machines are switched on, they synchronise between each other.

Being the geek, I have provisioned a new virtual machine from VULTR, using one of their high storage vm’s and set up BitTorrent Sync on it so I have a constant presence wherever I am. This costs me $8 a month. For the space, it’s seriously cheap!

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In the past, I’ve used Dropbox and Spideroak headless (without a GUI) to store backups for sites and other resources on a server. I immediately fell in love with the idea of running by own Dropbox-like setup without the costs, limits and also security concerns that Dropbox imposes, or without the constant monitoring required with spideroak due to the way it wastes space.

Having a ‘server’ means that I dont need to worry about not leaving a computer on to sync the files, and its also a great way to have a remote copy of my stuff, so if my house burnt down, i’d still have everything sat over in America.

Again, I would recommend VULTR – they have a very low cost virtual machine with high storage ($8 for 320GB storage – not SSD, but ideal for remote storage).